Interesting article in today’s Washington Post:  Oregon Senator Wants to Take On the Burden of Fixing the Tax Code, by Jeffrey H. Birnbaum:

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) has made it his mission to force Congress to rewrite the entire tax code. If he succeeds, every interest in town would take one side or the other in what would be the biggest legislative battle in years. That is just fine with Wyden. The last full-scale revision of the federal income tax was 20 years ago. Since then, Congress has made about 14,000 tax-law changes, and very few of them are what anyone would call reform. A lot of the loopholes and exceptions that were excised by the Tax Reform Act of 1986 have been essentially restored….

Wyden is convinced that 2006 will mark the start of a rethinking of the income tax. If he’s right, lobbyists, especially corporate lobbyists, will contest him at every turn. The tax code has become a breeding ground for narrow pleadings from almost every group imaginable.